dsmWeekly: September 20, 2023

Oak Park chefs Jessica and Ian Robertson at home with their sous-chefs Claire, Alex and Charlie. Photo: Duane Tinkey

FOOD AND DINING

The duo cooking up the next dining destination

Writer: Karla Walsh

If everything goes according to the plan, the highly anticipated restaurant Oak Park will open its doors by the end of October. Nobody is more eager for the big day than chefs Jessica and Ian Robertson, who’ve been simmering plans for years.

“We met at Baru 66 in 2012, where I was the pastry chef,” Jessica said. “Ian was hired on the savory side, and he kept asking me for a ride home from work. When we’d get to his house, we’d sit and talk in his driveway for hours.”

He found her funny, charming and hardworking. She found him passionate, driven and kind. Those drives home turned into drinks after work, then Sunday brunch dates and, eventually, cooking together at home — and cooking up a family. They married in 2018 and now have three kids: Charlie, 9, Claire, 7, and Alex, 4.

Over the years, they’ve worked together or individually at local favorites (Bistro Montage, Crème, 801 Chophouse) and some of the most famous restaurants in New York (ABC Kitchen, Daniel, Eleven Madison Park). They sharpened their skills in each kitchen but were missing the familiar taste of home.

So this fall, the duo will invite a lot more people to their table. Oak Park owner Kathy Fehrman tapped Ian to be the executive chef and Jessica to be the pastry chef at the restaurant on Ingersoll Avenue, where diners will be able to grab a spot at the bar or take a seat in the Prairie-style dining room to enjoy new American fare featuring produce from the garden right outside. Folks can visit for the full tasting menu or just pop in for a glass of wine from the 7,000-bottle cellar and a dessert to cap off the night.

Whatever diners order, the Robertsons promise the restaurant’s cuisine and culture will reflect what they’ve learned throughout their distinguished careers. As Jessica put it, they aim “to cultivate a healthy, balanced, creative, educational and organized kitchen that makes our family — and Des Moines — proud.”

It helps, of course, that the couple has so much experience cooking together professionally and personally. Whenever they work side by side, Ian said, “the whole meal always flows really nicely from start to finish.”

By the way, we snagged the Robertson family’s recipes for saffron pasta and cream puffs and posted them online.

Photo: Latino Heritage Festival

BEST BET

Head downtown to celebrate Latino Heritage

The annual Latino Heritage Festival is the place to discover traditions, food and music from several south-of-the-border cultures, from the indigenous Aztec and Oaxacan in Mexico, to Brazilians and Peruvians farther south, and others across the Caribbean.

The strolling musicians from last year’s festival are strolling back. So as you walk through the crowds exploring the food, art displays and cultural booths, you might be serenaded by Mexican mariachi or Colombian folk musicians. You can expect plenty of colorful sights and sounds onstage, too, from performers across Iowa and beyond.

Plus, festival organizers teamed up this year with the Civic Music Association to host Cuban-born jazz pianist Alfredo Rodriguez, who will open the CMA’s 98th season with a concert at 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Temple Theater. And the Des Moines Symphony will broadcast its "Discover Fandango" concert (noted below) live at the festival at 2:30 p.m. Sunday.

The festival is family-friendly, so parents and grandparents can bring their kids of all ages to learn about Latin traditions. There will be plenty of activities and crafts to occupy the little ones, who can take a swing at a pinata every hour on the hour.

Daily admission is $5 for adults and free for children 12 and under. Proceeds support local Latino organizations and scholarships for Latino students. Buy tickets online.

THE WEEK AHEAD

Streetstyle Open Competition (6 p.m. Thursday, 4 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Saturday): Skaters are taking over downtown to roll, slide, jump and bump their way through pop-up skateparks at various locations. Spectators can watch the action while grabbing a bite to eat from Lachele’s and What the Fries food trucks or a drink from the New Northwestern. Plus, each night ends with a 9 p.m. after-party hosted by a different local bar. No registration is required; just show up and have fun.

Oktoberfest (3 p.m-1 a.m. Friday and noon-1 a.m. Saturday): The city’s annual Oktoberfest kicks off two nights of Bavarian revelry at its new home at Water Works Park. Look for authentic German food from Strudl Haus alongside dozens of German beers and cocktails under the towering oaks at the Des Moines Biergarten. Visitors can polka it up at two stages that will host a dozen local DJs, live bands and a silent disco. Oh — and don’t forget to don your lederhosen for a chance to win some beer. Tickets must be purchased in advance.

Winefest Grand Tasting (6-9 p.m. Friday): As of Wednesday afternoon, a few tickets were still up for grabs for the big to-do at the beautifully renovated Hotel Fort Des Moines, where guests can enjoy hors d’oeuvres and sample fine wines from around the world.

Illumifest (4-9 p.m. Saturday): West Des Moines’ family-friendly Fall Festival of Light is back. Grab a bite to eat from local vendors, then take in the early fall colors from a new angle on a hot air balloon. The event wraps up with a performance from the Faculty Lounge, whose members are all local teachers, and a fireworks display. All activities are free, but certain activities may have limited capacity.

Des Moines Symphony (7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday): Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers headlines the symphony’s season opener with a program of heart-pounding dance music from or inspired by Mexico and Spain. And the grand finale may be truly grand: Arturo Marquez wrote “Fandango” specifically for Meyers, who premiered it last fall for a sold-out crowd at New York’s Carnegie Hall.

Vegan Farmers Market (noon-3 p.m. Sunday): Load up your reusable bags at the season’s last vegan farmers market. Dozens of vendors sell tamales, donuts, nachos, and pizza, along with eco-friendly crafts and more. Heads up: Not all vendors accept cards, so be sure to bring cash. Follow VegLife on Facebook to learn more.

Bands, Brews & Bikes (1-3 p.m. Sunday): The James Biehn Band takes the stage at the Lauridsen Amphitheater at Water Works Park. Led by Iowa native and Central Iowa Music Lab owner, the band plays bluesy originals with a mix of classics.

COMMUNITY

LGBTQ legacies: A couple hundred friends and fans of dsm 2023 LGBTQ Legacy Leaders filled the River Center on Thursday to honor their ongoing work to make Iowa a more welcoming and inclusive place to call home. Honorees Rich Hendricks, Rick Miller, Laurie Phelan, Scott Valbert and Aime Wichtendahl and ally Rich Salas shared a few inspiring words of wisdom, which you can hear in this six-minute video. A recording of the full program is also available on dsm’s YouTube channel.

COMMUNITY

Banned Book Festival: Beaverdale Books hosts a day-long event to “celebrate the freedom to read,” according to a recent press release. From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Oct. 7 at the Franklin Event Center (in the former Franklin Junior High School), visitors can attend panel discussions (with Rekha Basu, Randy Evans, Odell McGhee, Susan Woody and former dsm editor Christine Riccelli, among others), meet nationally acclaimed authors and listen to readings of banned poetry and children’s books. Vendors will be on hand to sell books and bookish merchandise before the event’s final chapter, a banned-book trivia contest hosted by the American Civil Liberties Union and Iowa Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee. Check out the full schedule online.

The delightful Ross Gay. Photo: Natasha Komoda

ARTS AND CULTURE

Want a pick-me-up? Pick up a 'delightful' book.

A few years ago, the award-winning poet and Indiana University writing professor Ross Gay gave himself an assignment. “I decided that it might feel nice, even useful, to write a daily essay about something delightful. I remember laughing at myself for how obvious it was. I could call it something like ‘The Book of Delights,’” he explained in the preface to his book by that very title.

That book came out in 2019. And then the pandemic hit and the whole world seemed delight deficient. And then a lot of people bought Gay’s book and told their friends about it. And now he’s just published a follow-up called — you guessed it — “The Book of (More) Delights” and has turned into a literary celebrity.

Just yesterday, in fact, Iowa Public Radio host Charity Nebbe interviewed him on “The Talk of Iowa.”

Of course, if you really want to double down on delights, including drinks and desserts, head to “The Event of Delights” 7-9 p.m. Saturday at Storyhouse Bookpub in the East Village, where you can pick up signed copies of Gay’s new book. After a bit, the party will drift around the corner to Raygun, where Gay will pop in for a virtual visit via Zoom and a few local writers will read their own short delightful essays. The lineup includes: Megan Bannister (an expert on a few of the “world’s largest” roadside attractions), William Bortz, Isaac Hamlet, Abbey Paxton, Abena Sankofa Imhotep, Katy Swalwell, F. Amanda Tugade and the novelist Denise Williams (who wrote a book called “I Hate You” and the sequel “I Still Hate You” in second grade but has apparently changed her tune).

You can buy tickets online for $8 and, maybe, live happily ever after after.